Top 10 Android Augmented Reality Apps

Augmented reality exists as a fine line between the digital virtual world and the physical real-world. It can also be seen as a lens by which you enrich your view of reality, hence augmented reality. Mobile is now the largest growing consumer sector of augmented reality with new applications being released regularly.

Android is at the forefront of the new technology with many new applications taking advantage of its well accommodating accelerometer, compass, camera and GPS system. Here is a list of the top 10 augmented reality apps for Android:

1. Wikitude World Browser - This app combines Wikipedia content with location awareness to provide real-time information about your surroundings. By panning your phone camera across a scene, you can see any POI’s (points of interest) that are recognized by the app.

2. Layar Reality Browser - This is one of the first augmented reality apps to hit the market and still retains its spot near the top in popularity. Depending on what type of layer you choose to include in your view, you can see many types of real-time digital information over top your view.

3. Wikitude Drive - Wikitude Drive overlays driving instructions atop your camera’s live video feed of the road. This allows users to watch the road as they are driving through their phone’s screen with detailed information.

4. Weather Reality - Weather Reality allows for many types of real-time weather related interactions. You can view detailed weather reports through your phone’s camera along with current conditions, radar, severe weather reports and the path of the sun and the moon.

5. AugSatNav - AugSatNav is an augmented reality navigation system primarily intended for walkers. Walking directions are provided to you through your live camera feed as you follow your path ahead.

7. Tweeps Around - Tweeps Around combines Twitter with augmented reality by showing you who is tweeting in your immediate area and what they are saying. By pointing your camera in the direction of someone who’s sent out a tweet, you’ll see a marker with their distance and tweet.

8. TagWhat - TagWhat is an augmented reality social networking app that allows users to tag any object in their camera’s view. Friends of users can then view the tags and see any details that have been included.

9. Google Goggles - Google Goggles is an app that allows you to capture an image of any object in your camera’s view and then image recognition software compares it to others in its database to find a match. This can be useful to find information quickly on any object, place or words of interest.

10. Space InvadAR - This app is a vision-based augmented reality game that allows you to feed in real-time video and then augment it with aliens and spaceships that you have to fight off.

Augmented reality will undoubtedly continue to push the boundaries for how we view our physical world and with the technical capabilities needed to support such technology, Android is poised to be increasingly more integrated with augmented reality mobile apps in the future.